Amazon Goes to the CARNIVAL

Article first published as CARNIVAL ROW Review on Seat42F.

WARNING: This review contains spoilers for the pilot, but only the pilot.

With Game of Thrones over, a slew of fantasy shows will surely be trying to capture that audience. Amazon’s entry into the race is CARNIVAL ROW, a dark drama that merges magic and the real world into a steampunk, war-torn, fictional version of Britain. While Game of Thrones, it is not, CARNIVAL ROW does have some intriguing elements.

The story begins with fae Vignette Stonemoss (Cara Delevingne, Suicide Squad) fleeing her home. With her brethren strung up or shot down around her, she somehow dodges bullets and barely makes it to a sailing ship off the coast. But that is only the beginning of her troubles as she makes her way to the heart of the Burge, a stand-in for London, England.

The other lead is Vignette’s missing lover whom she assumes dead, human Rycroft “Philo” Philostrate (Orlando Bloom, Pirates of the Caribbean, Lord of the Rings). Philo is working as an inspector for the local constabulary, trying to find whoever is beating up the fairy folk refugees, also called Pix. Philo, having fought alongside them in the war with the mysterious Pact, feels respect and decency towards the fairies who have had to flee their home, which is not a sentiment shared by all of his kinfolk.

The political and racial themes are many and central. In a city populated mostly by humans, but with a decent among of fairies and Pucks, the tensions are rife. This should be familiar territory for showrunner Rene Echevarria, one of the writers for former series Star Trek: Deep Space 9, who is used to handling such stories. The relationships between the races at large and the individuals specifically are complex and dense, something only glimpsed at as the show begins, and with plenty of room to delve deeper. They feel familiar to the real world, but also appear to be pretty solidly laid out in their fictional version.

Design is one of the strongest elements of the series, aside from a small handful of weak spots in the CGI. It’s easy to see the influence of Guillermo del Toro, who was involved in the development, but also is more grounded than some of his work. The steampunk sensibility is in vogue, rightly so, but the production also has enough originality in the details to avoid just ripping off an existing style. Mixing something akin to magic into this sensibility is pleasing and feels natural.

Bloom is excellent, as one might expect, and Delevingne is coming along as an actress, not quite matching his level, but close enough for a starting point. I expect she’ll improve the series progresses, and she does project a tone that fits the world well. They are joined by Jared Harris (Mad Men), Indira Varma (Game of Thrones), Tamzin Merchant (The Tudors), David Gyasi (Interstellar), Simon McBurney (The Borgias), Andrew Gower (Outlander), and many lesser known, but talented, performers. I have no complaints about the cast, many of whom have fine experience in genre programs.

Great production design, a good cast, and thorough world building are all terrific elements to have, but don’t guarantee an overall success. CARNIVAL ROW feels very near to a great series, but there’s something just a little off to keep it from getting up to that top tier. It’s hard to put a finger on just why that is. Perhaps it’s a little slow, and isn’t quite as compelling as it needs to be to pull that off. Or maybe it’s just a hair darker than necessary. It’s fine, to be sure, but lacking some ineffable quality at the moment. It may gain this in time, but just doesn’t quite have it yet. It’s good enough to give it a chance, but I’m not sure at present if it’ll be worth seeing through.

To judge for yourself, check out all eight episodes of CARNIVAL ROW, now available on Amazon Prime.

Avoid CONTAINMENT

Article first published as CONTAINMENT Review on Seat42F.

Beginning this week, the CW is broadcasting a miniseries (remade from the Belgian program Cordon) called CONTAINMENT. It tells the story of a viral outbreak in a major city, as seen through the eyes of individuals in law enforcement and the medical field, as well as a few who just have been unlucky in their timing and location. Things spiral out of control as the horrific disease spreads, and panic ensues.

While CONTAINMENT probably most closely resembles Outbreak or its like, it will most likely be compared to The Walking Dead and Fear the Walking Dead, given the popularity of zombie programs right now, which are often caused by a virus. To make the parallels even more clear, CONTAINMENT is set in Atlanta, Georgia, the same place The Walking Dead begins, and goes inside a hospital. Plus, there are riots and fences and panic in the streets, much as in the first season of Fear the Walking Dead.

These comparisons will not do CONTAINMENT any favors. While The Walking Dead is focused on serious character development, the zombie outbreak really being secondary to the story, CONTAINMENT’s plot is driven by the illness, with the characters coming secondary. Although there are a lot of varied personalities, none are anything new on television, and the ensemble could easily be pulled from almost any soapy serial drama. The relationships are needlessly complicated, and characters are artificially separated as events unfold.

CONTAINMENT features an ensemble with no true leading man or lady, a number of them getting roughly equal screen time, and no high-profile actors steal focus from the others, either. There’s Lex (David Gyasi, Interstellar), a cop who early on makes the decision to send his best friend, Jake (Chris Wood, The Vampire Diaries), into danger. Lex’s girlfriend, Jana (Christina Marie Moses, Odd Brodsky), also happens to be Jake’s ex, and turns to Jake for advice when she gets cold feet about moving in with Lex. It’s this trio, in particular, that make the entire series feel contrived, unoriginal, and not at all grounded in reality.

Besides that trio, Katie (Kristen Gutoskie, Beaver Falls) is a school teacher whose class, which includes her son, is visiting the ground zero hospital as events go down; Sabine (Claudia Black, Farscape) is a CDC honcho brought in to manage the situation; and Teresa (Hanna Mangan Lawrence, Spartacus: War of the Damned) is a pregnant, unmarried young woman who plans to run away with her boyfriend. There are also a few others, but none that I can recall enough to name at present, and the CW’s website, lacking a cast page most networks have, doesn’t really make it easy to look up the main players.

In short, though, from the batch you see, I think it’s pretty clear that CONTAINMENT is not going for something deep and moving and realistic, but rather, pure entertainment. Like other disaster movies and broadcast network shows before it, CONTAINMENT is forcing situations to spark emotional reactions at moments where there should not be. Instead of focusing on dealing with the crisis as they need to, the main players will have their attention split by friends and loved ones who should either be out of the way or completely cut off from communication. It just doesn’t make for a very high quality show, and since the archetypes are so familiar, probably a pretty predictable one, as well. I’d call this one a skip.

CONTAINMENT premieres Tuesday at 9/8c on the CW.